Ever wonder how marketing decisions are made? Using a data-driven approach, this “Science of Marketing” blog series will break down the methodology behind the marketing madness. We’ll examine the strategy that accompanies the UX, design, copywriting, development, and analytics processes, all in order to maximize a company’s impact on its market.
When most people think of software engineering and coding, they bring up mental images of strings of indecipherable code, hackers, and computers with too many monitors. While we at Brandography do enjoy our monitors, we also like helping clients gain a bit more understanding of the often complex world of website development.
Software engineering may have as many complicated acronyms and jargon as the hard sciences, but you don’t need a Ph.D. to understand what’s going on! Here are three of the biggest factors we consider in our website development services:
Picking Platform & Plugins
With options from simple DIY website builders to fully custom, powerful applications, anything is possible on the Internet. It’s important to find the right balance between using existing tools and platforms and building something new.
Let’s say you want a reservation system on your site so clients can book services online. There are many existing reservation tools, but many won’t be an exact fit. Maybe you find a tool that has 85% of the features you want and will only take a couple days to set up. How do you weigh that against a custom tool that meets 100% of your needs but will take two weeks to make? Taking into account that custom work is more expensive upfront, but existing tools may need more long-term maintenance, this can be a very difficult decision. Rely on our software engineers’ experience and ability to ask the right questions to make the best choice.
Anticipating Change
Change is regular and rapid on the Internet. Whether you will be adding weekly blog posts or updating and expanding product lines, it’s important to think about what your website will need to be in the future.
“Long-term goals are just as important as immediate goals when building a website,” says Cody Ogden, one of Brandography’s software engineers. “You must take into account scalability as you add products or content, and you have to look at trends in your industry as well as in technology. For example, the trend toward mobile use has greatly impacted how we build websites.”
StatCounter reports that October 2016 was the point at which mobile Internet use surpassed desktop Internet use worldwide. Anticipating these kinds of trends, along with maintenance needs, scalability, and company needs, will help ensure a website design and development project with long-term success.
Testing Performance
It doesn’t matter how cool your site looks or what neat features it has if it doesn’t work as intended. Even a slow load time can make users leave before they see what you have to offer.
“Pages that were just one second faster experienced a 27% conversion rate increase.” – Soasta
Your website work isn’t over just because you’ve launched a new site. Just like in the science world, it’s important for developers to check their work and review each step in the process to ensure each part is functioning properly.
Creating and monitoring events and goals for your site is essential to staying proactive and fixing issues before they become a problem. Regular site backups, audits, and platform updates round out the list of necessary website upkeep steps.
If you’re ready to build a new site or revamp your current digital presence, talk to the software engineers at our web development company. You can rely on our experience to choose the right tools, properly assess your needs, and perform regular maintenance to keep your site working for you and your clients. Contact us online or at 612-460-0016 to get started!
